DTV sales soar: Digital television products are flying off the shelves, according to statistics presented by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention held in Las Vegas in mid-April. Shipments of DTV products increased more than 124% in January and February of this year, compared to the same period in 2003, reaching a total of $1.3 billion in revenue. During the two months, 853,443 DTV units went from factories to dealers. More than 9.73 million DTV products—defined as "integrated sets and monitors displaying active vertical scanning lines of at least 480p"—have been sold since 1998, CEA spokesmen stated.

Frustrated at the slow pace of the changeover to digital television, a wide range of companies and public interest groups have organized as the Digital Transition Coalition (<A HREF="http://www.digitaltransitioncoalition.org">DTC</A>) to promote the format and to hasten the "return of critical spectrum back to the American taxpayer for use in new technologies," according to an announcement made April 20.

TDK and Blu-ray: Blank-media giant TDK has officially endorsed Blu-ray technology, according to an April 5 report out of the CeBIT technology show in Hanover, Germany. TDK is the latest to join the Blu-ray contingent, following Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer. The 50-gigabyte capacity of Blu-ray discs will accommodate feature-length high-definition video programming and recording. TDK's contribution will make the 5" discs more user-friendly by eliminating a proposed "disc caddy."

This month, <A HREF="http://www.integraresearch.com">Integra Research</A> should begin delivering the RDV-1.1, a high-performance universal disc player announced in January at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The THX Ultra-certified RDV-1.1 not only plays every current optical disc format, including DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, CD, and SACD, but includes a video scaler that upconverts ordinary DVDs to 720p or 1080i. The internal "O-Plus FlexScale" video scaler also works with external video sources connected to the RDV-1.1's unit's rear-panel component, composite, and S-video inputs.